


In another life maybe you and i will be walking down the aisle in white

by Swifty_Fox



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Art Professor!Joe, Artist!Nicky, Death, Getting Back Together, M/M, Post-Break Up, like the permanent kind, this is not a feel good fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:28:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26974411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Swifty_Fox/pseuds/Swifty_Fox
Summary: I wanted to set things right. I wanted to do things properly this time around, without fear or hatred or prejudice. I wanted to love you like I should have done and I did. For one goddamn blessed year I did. I never stopped loving you Joe, never for a moment. If it is any consolation, you cannot hate me more than I do myself. I am not perfect, I am not even pure, but Joe please believe that I loved you with every fiber of my being. You have to believe that, if nothing else.Forgive me, I thought we would have had more time.-Nicky----Ten years ago Joe and Nicky's relationship fell apart, leaving both men alone and hurt. Now, Nicky has come back to town and wants to rekindle things and Joe cannot help but wonder whether this is truly the best thing for him. The definition of insanity is, after all, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre/Nile Freeman, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 44
Kudos: 156





	In another life maybe you and i will be walking down the aisle in white

**Author's Note:**

> Title song and inspiration from Everyone Changes by Kodaline
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYM-60YWzms

_ Dear Joe, _

_ I died on a Saturday morning. _

_ That is to say, that is when I learned that you were dating again. I know that is not very pragmatic of me, and probably a little dramatic because I do know it is my fault, but then again, I always was the more dramatic of us when it came to the things that mattered.  _

~

Joe al-Kaysani was running abominably late. That morning his alarm had not gone off, he’d burned not just his first batch of eggs but also the second, and then he’d nearly forgotten to feed the cat, forcing him to race back up the seven flights to his apartment to feed the crotchety old Tabby. Keane had mewed reproachfully at him when he opened the door and he affectionately threatened to kick the wretched creature out the window. He’d taken the stairs back down three at a time, nearly crashing into the kind old woman who lived two flights down and then the boozy Frenchman on the third floor who laughed at and cursed him in equal measure. 

His coffee was cold, his shirt buttons misaligned and he could feel the stubble of a beard beginning to form on his chin. He doesn’t notice the voicemail on his phone until he’s halfway through his first lecture, the students more asleep than awake at 8 AM, and though he cannot blame them it is rather irritating to not have any listening ears while he waxes poetic over 14th-century homoerotic poets.

Nobody appreciated the classics anymore. 

It’s not that Joe is impatient, no he had spent many years perfecting that particular virtue. But his mother would be the first to admit that  _ patience _ was a learned trait of his and not an inherent one. 

So yes, he spends the second half of the class intermittently glancing at his phone as if it would somehow telepathically transfer who had called him at such an early hour into his brain. Alas, such technology had not yet been invented so he resigned himself to wait until the end of class to check.

He dismisses them with the offer of open office hours though both he and his students know they will not be taken advantage of until finals are a looming threat on the horizon. 

It’s a number, not a name, so he knows it is nobody in his contacts because he meticulously curated all his friends and families with a mixture of emojis and personal photos. His students are more wont to send a text than a voicemail and he’s more than a bit curious to see who this mysterious caller is. He hits play on the recording and sets it to speaker so that he can gather up the pile of Monet vs Manet essays sitting on his desk. 

A soft voice, always so soft, so level, so quiet that Joe had more often than not found himself needing to lean in to hear though he never complained, fills the room. It is an accent he has not heard in a long time, musical in cadence and a little country though only someone intimately familiar with Italian would notice. He has to grip the desk to steady his weak knees. 

~

_ I think the problem is that I always loved you too hard. Too much, too terrifying I did not know what to do with such an infinite feeling. I could not imagine how to contain it inside my mortal body. How do you put into words the feeling I had for you? _

_ Infinite. _

_ Consuming. _

_ Devastating. _

_ You always complained that I was never a words of affirmation kind of man. I simply thought that I could never compare to you.  _

_ Perhaps that was part of my problem. I put you on a pedestal Joe, I know I did. I saw you as something more, something better than I could ever be. I did not let you be human, I did not let you be flawed. I saw you as salvation, not as forever.  _

~

_ Nicky’s voice is the same _ .

That’s the only thing Joe can think, although he knows that there is no logical reason why it  _ wouldn’t _ be the same. Puberty had long released it’s grip from the other man when he had last seen him, body still needing some filling out but voice and tenor established. Joe could still picture him as he was at sixteen, jaw clean-shaven but pockmarked with bloody spots where he had ruined his shave. Joe had laughed at him and offered to kiss the sting away.

Nicky had blushed, Nicky always blushed, and looked away so Joe had done it anyways, his own burgeoning beard rubbing deliciously against Nicky’s skin. 

The phone creaks under his white-knuckled grip and it takes a moment before he is able to bring himself to relax and focus again on the voicemail

“-in town for a couple of months and wondering if you’d like to grab drinks and catch up. If you don’t hate me that is.” 

“Hate you…” Joe whispers and shakes his head with a laugh “this man” he mutters angrily, tapping the phone and waiting for the sound of the dial tone.

  
  


It rings barely three times before being picked up.

“Ciao?”

“Cliche and pretentious” Joe finds himself saying, snapping the essays against the desk to align them “Ciao, you sound like a tacky model from a Lizzie Mcguire movie.” 

“Yusuf” Nicky's voice is warm, so very warm and Joe can’t help but feel himself shiver with emotion at the familiarity, shiver with anger. Nicky didn’t have the right to say his name so intimately anymore. “You know I do not know American media as you do. Your references are lost on me.” 

“That excuse grew old by the time we were sixteen Nicky. It is no less so at thirty-six.” 

Nicky is silent and Joe falters, suddenly realizing that their easy banter wasn’t, perhaps, as easy and familiar as it had once been. The decade between their last conversation, more of a fight really, stretches between them and Joe clears his throat, fingering his cheaters.

“Why did you call Nicky?”

“I told you, my work-”

“Yes, I listened to the voicemail but why did you  _ call _ ?” if his voice cracks, Joe won’t admit it. 

A sigh. A soft click. The lid of a lighter as Nicky lights up a cigarette. Lucky Strikes, like the actors in the movies. A habit Nicky had brought over from Italy when all his experience with America was through the lens of black and white movies and the cigarette cartons sold in stalls in the market. Joe had always hated it, hated the way it soured Nicky’s tongue, and brought about a permanent cough. He loved the way it clung to his clothes. 

“I do not like how we left things, Joe.” Nicky says “I have-” A hiss, Nicky catching his words, rethinking them on the go as he had always done, always so careful with what he chooses to reveal of his heart “I have always wondered if there was a better way to have done things.”

“You mean a way that didn’t involve us in a screaming match at 3 AM and your clothes on the front lawn?” 

Nicky laughs.  _ Haha _ . A short, controlled exhalation, always more for the benefit of others than himself.  _ Haha _ . Joe could taste the expletive on his tongue.

“Haha. Yes.” 

_ He should say no. He should hang up. He should tell Nicky to go fuck himself. He was tired of beautiful men with cowards souls. _

Instead, he says “The Garde Bar. Eight o'clock tonight.”

“I’ll be there.” 

~

_ Dearest Joe, _

_ Do you remember when we first met? Freshman year. Your head was shaved and your smile was wide, wide enough to swallow the whole world in its joy. You laughed and I thought I had never seen someone who had done it so before. With their whole body, from shoulders to head to toes, all quaking and shaking with a mirth that was not private but to be shared with the entire world. You invited me to sit at your table and tongue-tied and shy I agreed. You were fifteen and I fourteen and my emotions too big and body too small to hold them. I looked at you and felt things I could not or would not name. I never told you that did I? How you made my heart stir from the beginning, long before we laid down our arms and fell into something more like love than teenage lust.  _

_ You smiled at me and I smiled back and you said that you remembered what it was like to be the new kid, remembered what it was like to come to America, to not know the language or the mannerisms or anything and just feel so much like a fish out of water. I was just a kid from a small town in Italy and had never seen a boy who carried himself like a Man and held the confidence of someone who knew who and what he was. I was afraid of it and I was afraid of those things that made me feel so sudden and so fast and I said something rude. I cannot even recall what it was that I said but I do know it was in more than of ill taste.  _

_ And you.  _

_ And you. _

_ You in your happiness and kindness and eternal patience could have chosen to be kind and aloof but you too were just a boy and responded in a boy's anger.  _

_ I threw the first punch but you most certainly won that first fight though even today you won’t admit it out of some form of twisted chivalry.  _

_ And as we sat in the principal's office bloodied and steaming you looked at me and I looked at you and I knew from that day forwards we would be the  _ **_worst_ ** _ of enemies.  _

~

When Joe had last seen Nicky he had been twenty-two and newly graduated. His beard was fresh on his chin and his skin still held the youthful buoyancy of childhood. Joe was just applying for Grad school, Nicky was picking up his first apprenticeship at an art restoration firm. They lived together in a tiny two-bedroom flat, though one room was designated the ‘office space’ until family came to visit. They wandered the streets and danced in bars and fed each other  _ crostini _ and  _ briouate. _ They loved deeply and held each other at night and during the day went their separate ways, nothing more than roommates, than childhood friends. 

Of course, that had ended with tears and heartbreak and though that flat was long gone, sometimes Joe swore he could still smell the savory scent of oil and ciabatta baking. 

The Nicky before him was that same man and nothing like him. He had finally filled out to the broadness that his shoulders had before only hinted at, inches added since the last time Joe had measured the width of him with his eyes. His biceps stretched his shirt comfortably but not excessively and the lines on his face were dignified rather than bitter. The lights of the bar caught on a few silver hairs here and there and his eyes were the same unreadable color they had always been. He had smile lines around his mouth now and his skin glowed. He was clean-shaven but the rough stubble across his jaw promised a full beard. 

Part of Joe had hoped he had become ugly, that age would have stolen his beauty with creeping creaky fingers. He thinks he would love him just as deeply anyways. Instead, he drinks him in like water and marvels at the way he could see all the masters in the curve of his nose. Caravaggio's warmth in his skin, the flyway hair of Van Gogh, Vermeer blue in his shirt, Raphael's complexion, and the beauty of Michelangelo's angels. 

_ He hasn’t changed a bit _ .

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Nicky says, eyes tracking over Joe and flaying him bare.

Joe sips his mint lemonade to buy him time before answering, to compose his straining heart. Perhaps death would take him here and now, bursting the arteries to his heart and sparing him the awkward pain of the dinner to come. 

“I should hope I have. I’ve finally learned to care for my hair properly.” 

Nicky smiles in his particular way, where it was more in the eyes than in the mouth and he laughs his laugh again.  _ Haha. _

“I always liked your hair.”

“I kept it short for most of the time.”

“I still liked it.” 

Joe hums and can’t help but squint his eyes playfully like he used to do across the classroom, across dinner. It saddens him that Nicky no longer blushes. It shatters him the way, instead, that Nicky looks at him with such an infinite well of tenderness and sadness that he cannot see the bottom. 

“So what have you been doing with yourself this past decade?” He asks roughly, leaning back in his chair so the waitress can set down his dinner. Across from him, Nicky slides his elbows off the table - a nasty habit that he always laughed about how it irritated his mother to no end- to make room for his own meal.

“Oh, you know” He shrugs, waving a hand “the usual. Restoring dusty old art, breathing in turpentine and asbestos” his tongue curls so pleasantly over the word asbestos of all things that Joe has to grip his glass to stop himself from leaping over the table and kissing him. He thought he would be angrier, colder when faced with Nicolo di Genova and yes he  _ was _ but he also remembered how it felt to love this man, and oh he  _ ached _ . “I started my own restoration business” He continues, starting Joe out of his thoughts. 

“That’s amazing, I know it was a dream of yours.” The words feel awkward, stilted, living firmly in the space of 'I knew you once but not now.’ 

Nicky smiles, a true smile, one that does reach his eyes and Joe thinks he could thank the other man's God for making such a wondrous sight. 

“I joined seminary school for a time.” Nicky’s voice twists humorously.

Joe blinks several times and barks out a laugh “Wait, seriously? I mean I know you were voted most likely to go to a nunnery but that was a joke.” 

“Yes, seriously. I did not make it all the way, obviously” Nicky gestures to himself and Joe uses the excuse to once again examine the body that he had last seen in the final death throes of childhood and was now that of a man. “But after-after what happened I felt that I had nowhere to turn to. Mama had already cut me off by then and-” Joe winces at the memory “I figured that was the one place I could absolve myself.”

Joe picks at his food, watches the way the steam fogs up his fork, memories swirling across his mind like free papers in the wind.

Nicky watches him “I do not blame you for that anymore, you know” His eyes are kind, his voice kinder and it ruins Joe. 

_ You would have made a good Priest.  _

“What? Outing you to your mother?” A bitter laugh, a shame he had never quite gotten over.

“Yes,” The other man nods slowly “I was angry for a long time, of course, you had no right.” His frankness makes Joe flinch “But I chose to forgive rather than stay angry, it did me no service. God knows I put you through enough myself. We both hurt each other deeply enough over the years, Joe.” 

He doesn’t know what to say to that.

“Why did you not? Become a priest I mean.” seems like a safer option. 

Nicky's mouth twists though it is not quite a smile. His mole catches the shadows and Joe remembers all the times he pressed tender kisses to it. 

“I tried to kill myself. I think I realized I could not go through with Priesthood, not with the demons inside me. But where else did I have to go? I knew that it would damn my soul but…” He shakes his head, seemingly oblivious to the way that Joe’s entire world had stopped, his fingers white-knuckled on his silverware and food turned ashes to his mouth. “I saw no other way out. They quietly asked me to leave after that and I was glad to go. A former professor was happy to offer me a position underneath him at a local museum.” 

Joe slowly puts his hands on the table, tries to hide the way they shake. Whatever may have happened between them, whatever fights or anger or harsh words, the thought of a world without Nicolo turned his stomach worse than any sickness he had ever felt. There could not  _ be _ a world without this man.

“I won’t pity you,” he says finally, voice rough “You are a grown man and you made your choice but Jesus, Nicky- you could have called someone. Called me instead-” 

Nicky smiles again with his eyes “Could I? Look me in the eyes and tell me you would not have hung up on me the moment you heard my voice.” 

“Not if you had said it was something like that-” he argues, temper rising.

“And would you have given me the chance to explain?” Nicky laughs, though it is more bitter than not “You would have told me to go fuck myself in three languages and blocked my number.” 

Joe cannot deny his words.

They sink into a sullen silence. Both men eat, their thoughts unknown to the other but similarly contemplating the distance that yawns between them. 

Plates are cleared away, wine offered and accepted, red for Nicky, sparkling water for Joe. Nicky sips his like the son of wealthy Italian aristos that he is and Joe savors the popping bubbles. The years once again stretch between them. Eventually, Joe brings up a tale of a mutual acquaintance, something funny and lighthearted and easy. Safe ground. They talk, reminisce, and laugh for hours until all but they are left and the staff are beginning to put up the chairs. 

“We should go.” Joe says reluctantly “I’ve got class tomorrow, and I’m sure you need to be at work too.” 

Nicky laughs, stands, and holds out a hand for Joe to take. “So you got your PhD. I’d heard through the vine. I can picture you in front of a whole lecture hall with your rapt audience. Lecturing on the finer points of Degas and Bernini. Ranting of the erasure of other Golden Ages of Art not centered in the Western world. How you must hold the students rapt.” 

Nicky’s hand is so warm, calluses on his fingertips from holding brushes and chemical scars on his palms. It was as familiar to Joe as his own hand. “It’s grapevine, not vine” he corrects automatically, then laughs “You give me far too much credit, it is all I can do to keep their attention.” 

“That is their loss then.” Nicky muses, holding the door for Joe to step out of.

The night is chilled outside, October air nipping at Joe’s cheeks and burying its way even past his beard. He shivers and pops his collar as Nicky does the same. They both were born and bred in temperate climates and though Joe loved the winter months, he preferred to observe them from indoors. 

Nicky’s breath clouds the air as he laughs and Joe can’t help but marvel at the sight, at that one physical observation of them being  _ alive _ and here. Perhaps he was a bit too much of a romantic but he found himself struck with the enormity that was the concept of existing. 

“You are marvelous.” he finds himself saying. 

Nicky looks him directly in the eyes and smiles. 

“I missed you, Yusuf,” he says.

Joe once again finds himself speechless. The Nicky he had known was a boy drowning in fear and for a time Joe thought he could be the one to help him tread water. The Nicky of Joe’s memory was as warm and loving as could be in private but cold and distant in the rest of the world. He brushed away Joe’s hands, renounced his touch, and avoided his gaze. He fluttered and blushed and scowled. He was not this confident man before him, who looked Joe in the eyes and told the honest truths of his heart. Who started his affection for all the world to hear. 

“Would you like to come back to my place?” Joe asks. 

~

_ You are Marvelous.  _

_ Joe, you are the one who is marvelous, who is perfection and divinity, and all the words that my lips do not know. You shook me to my core that night, looking at me like something beautiful and worthwhile when it was I, in all my wretchedness, who had hurt you so. _

_ Joe, Yusuf, of the name Joseph if you would allow me to step into my pulpit for a moment. The father of Jesus Christ, the husband of Mary who when he found his wife pregnant seemingly by thin air did not doubt her devotion nor her faithfulness to him but rather took the growing life inside her as a gift beyond all others. Joseph is the name for a man of patience and of unconditional love. A man who does not ask who or how or why but simply accepts the wonders of life for the gift that they are. _

_ You quiet me, Joe. _

~

“And then I invited him back to my place” Joe groans into his hands.

Nile snorts, nearly spewing trail mix across the steps of his apartment complex. “You didn’t!” His once TA, now colleague looks at Joe with a specific brand of unbridled amusement and disbelief that has his humiliation burning all the hotter. 

“I  _ did. _ ” he whispers in horror “This man ruined my life and I invited him back into my bed like nothing ever  _ happened _ .” 

“Was it really that bad?” Nile catches a peanut between her teeth, crunches it thoughtfully, and offers the bag to which he declines. He was pretty sure some pork byproduct was used in them somewhere along the line.

“Nicky kept his identity a secret for the entire time we were together. He was terrified of being found out and I know it is something everyone must come to terms with on their own time but goodness Nile we were sharing a  _ bed _ every night. It killed me inside every day year after year for almost ten years to simply be the  _ friend _ when all I wanted was to shout my love for him from the rooftops.” 

“If you were so in love with him then what happened?” 

Joe laughs, rubs a hand over the back of his head, and looks up at the turbulent grey skies “I told his mother. I-I was drunk, I can’t remember why though I’m sure it was out of spite after an argument. And I ran into her and it just came out. We fought. Worse than ever before. And that was it I guess. It was over.” 

He can see the other woman mull over his words, her braids tight to her skull and trailing impossibly long down her back. He’d gone with her the last time she’d had them taken out for washing and had seen the way her curls bounced back around her hair like a crown. He had thought they were beautiful but knew she preferred the clean efficiency of cornrows. 

“So what did he say then? When you invited him back?” 

The relief floods in, washing away the creeping melancholy as he remembers Nicky’s tearful face, his own vicious triumphant pain. He was not proud of the wrathful creature he could become when prompted and he liked to think he had grown some since that night. 

He moans again in humiliation, once again running to the safety of his hands “He  _ laughed! _ Laughed like I’d told a funny joke and then said he had better get going back to his place, he had a particularly difficult Pierre Bonard restoration in the morning. I stood there like a fool, Nile, a complete fool I tell you.” 

Nile is trying not to laugh, he can tell “So he was trying to protect his virtu- wait did you say a  _ Bonard? _ Like an honest to god Bonard?” 

“Nicky is very talented,” Joe sighs through his fingers.

“I thought you said he was an asshole.” 

“He is talented  _ and _ an asshole. They go hand in hand more often than not you will find.” 

“Holy shit you gotta date this guy again and get me access to these paintings.” Nile’s eyes glow with that particular mania that art historians get at the thought of touching pieces of history. It had been what originally endeared her to Joe, her enthusiasm for all the artists, not just the masters. That and a near eidetic memory for the various styles of modern sculptors. 

“This conversation is about  _ me, Nile _ . Not your hard-on for Post-Impressionist Frenchmen.”

“I’d ask you kindly to leave Frenchmen out of this. We’re not all so bad” A voice says behind them.

It’s the Frenchman from the third floor, sooty blonde locks falling over his face as he takes an impressive pull from a silver flask and deposits himself to the left of Joe with only the slightest of stumbles.

“Are you day drunk?” Nile asks with a level of respect and disgust that only a postgrad could muster.

“ _ Fantastically _ so.” The Frenchman says genially “I’m Booker, nice to meet you.”

“Nile Freeman” 

“Joe al-Kaysani” Booker has a firm handshake despite the smell of gin on his breath and he smiles “I almost ran you over the other morning.”

“Yes, the Professor, I remember you. Your shirt was misaligned.” 

“Yes, yes, it wasn’t my best morning.”

Booker snorts “I’ll say. Anyways, if I were him I would have accepted. Not-” he adds at Joe’s incredulous look “-that I am interested in men, but it is rather the principle of the thing. If you ask me though, he’s doing it because he’s trying to rekindle things with you only, he wants to do it right this time.” 

“How would you know?” Nile asks suspiciously. 

Booker smiles mirthlessly “Well, it is what I would have done if my wife would even look at me. Alas, that ship has long sailed, taking with it my children and sobriety.” 

“I see you simply came to join the little circle of misery.” Joe mumbles 

“Like calls to like my friend.” 

~

_ Lovely Joe, _

_ Do you remember our worst brawl? I do not mean that final coffin nail of our relationship, rather, I speak of course of the one our junior year of high school. I broke your nose but you snapped my arm clean in two and my mother almost pressed charges she was so furious. But instead, she looked me in the eye in full view of your family and school staff and that she would pray for people like  _ **_you_ ** _. I did not realize how much ugliness could be pushed into a word as universal as ‘you’.  _

_ I could see the anger on your face, disdain for the religion that would never claim you as something beloved but claimed roots from you, and even though I felt shame for my mother's words and my mother's actions I did not speak up. I was still angry and I was still cotton soaking up the weight of parents' expectations and church-pulpit-preachings and Corinthians and Leviticus and Genesis all held a vice grip on my heart.  _

_ But well, you did break my arm.  _

_ Dear Joe, you have always been the brave one and I wished every moment for even a drop of that. Perhaps that is why I claimed you as mine, out of a desperate need to have even an ounce of what made you, you. I desired you but I would not, could not ever let you in. I loved you and kept you and hurt you, keelhauled you against the impenetrable ship that was my heart and when the ragged pieces were left behind I still asked of you your silence.  _

_ It is no wonder our love was left in bloody tatters on that lawn.  _

_ ~ _

Nicky gets along with his friends.

It shouldn’t surprise him, really, but it does. Joe knows he needs to stop comparing the Nicky that he knew with the Nicky of now but he can’t help it. Nicky had always been kind, been a people person. He always had pencils on hand to offer to classmates, helped with homework, or bought a meal for a friend whose cash was running low while in college. He donated money at the grocery store and inquired into the woes of people crying on park benches. He was kind and good and caring. But he was also Nicky, who did not let anyone see inside his chest, not even Joe, and though many people claimed him as a friend, Nicolo Di Genova could only claim one. 

At first, Nile had been suspicious out of loyalty to Joe. 

“I’ve got my eyes on you, even if you do hold the keys to all my artwork dreams.” He’d told him, arms crossed and chin up. She’d worn her dog tags, her USMNC tattoo visible in short sleeves. Joe would call her out for the shot-gun act if he didn’t find the sight so endearing. 

Nicky had smiled with his eyes and laughed his laugh “Haha. Joe told me that you have a taste for French Art. I promise to be on my best behavior.” His eyes winked and glittered, soft and mischievous and though he was answering Nile the way he stared over her head at Joe made them feel far more directed at him.

He had to turn away, unable to process the enormity of his feeling and was met with a silver flask. Booker gives him an encouraging nod and he accepts it, still wondering how the lush Frenchman had managed to worm his way into their friend group. 

So yes, Nicky got along with his friends. He discussed postmodernist and impressionist art with Nile, drank red wine, and spoke of churches with Booker who had a passion for gothic architecture, and he smiled at Joe like nothing between them had ever changed. 

It made Joe angry, it made him furious. 

_ How dare he pretend that nothing had happened. How dare he shove his way back into Joe’s life and act like they were nothing but old lovers who had drifted apart _ . 

He tells Nicky as much, once the others had left, Bookers hand subtle on the small of Niles’ back

“Why are you doing this?” 

“Doing what? The dishes?” Nicky holds up the plate and rag he was using to dry it, brows beautifully furrowed. 

“Acting like everything-everything is fine between us? Like we didn’t speak for ten years. Like we didn’t break each other's hearts and say unforgivable things and-and-” Joe cuts himself off, throat tight and the lights in the kitchen going fuzzy. /  _ cannot think cannot breathe with you standing in my kitchen like this is just how things are now.  _

Nicky sets the plate down, bracing his hands in the rim of the sink. The veins in his arms stand out stark and handsome as he squeezes. “Do you not forgive me?” 

Joe’s mouth opens and closes. It’s the simplest, easiest question to ask and yet it still catches him off guard. 

“I….don't know” 

“That’s alright” Nicky answers, drying his hands on a rag and coming to stand in front of Joe. He holds his hands out and waits. “Can I touch you?” 

Joe knows it isn’t what Nicky meant. He knows he simply means hands on shoulders, a reassuring grasp. Nicky had always been tactile, even if he rarely allowed himself to be. He could still remember hands running over skin, the way sweat would gather at the wings of Nicky's shoulder blades and the dip of his throat; how his fingers would clench on Joe's shoulders, his waist, dig nails into the meat of him and not let go until completion had been found. 

‘Please touch me. Touch every inch of me, reach inside my chest, and press your artist fingers into the very flesh and muscle of my heart.’ 

Joe doesn’t voice his thoughts but he does nod, throat dry. Part of him expects some sort of cosmic happenence, some change in the world when contact is made. But it is only Nicky's fingers, warm and strong and masculine, cupping his shoulders with a tenderness he cannot even begin to comprehend. Entirely normal, but just as devastating. 

“You don’t have to forgive me, Joe. I’m not asking you to forget what we put each other through, that would be a disservice to both of us. But I have forgiven you and that is my choice. And I’m not asking you to start over, but I do want to know.” Nicky’s throat bobs. He’s nervous under the surety, his fingers trembling finely as he gripped Joe. He too was fearful of history and possibility. “Is there any chance for us to try again?” 

~

_ Joe, _

_ The funny thing about art restoration is, everything that I do is done with the intention of being wiped away.  _

_ The paints I use are made to be easily lifted from the original, the varnish and glue and staples all made with the expectation that someday some other curator will come by and wipe it all away. My work, though in pursuit of permanence, is impermanent in of itself. It is not my name that will be attached to the work, I will join the list of nameless curators who have protected true art over the centuries.  _

_ God teaches humility, that we should strive for good not for any sort of personal gain, but rather for the beauty of the act itself.  _

_ I cannot help but feel, however, a sense of fear at the idea of not leaving my mark on this world. What does my life matter, if I do not affect those around me? _

_ Will you remember me when my time comes Joe?  _

~

One date, one dinner at Joe's apartment, turns to two, three, four, until Nicky is spending every weekend at Joe's, cooking in his kitchen and wearing his clothes and cursing his cat out in soft Italian. 

Keane hated Nicky, growled and hissed at him at every turn and the dislike was more than mutual, much to Joe’s amusement. 

“It seems your knack with animals has faded” he bites his tongue on the ‘ _ my love’ _ he wanted to add, the ‘ _ my love’ _ he had used a thousand times before. The ‘ _ my love’ _ he was not ready to use again.  _ Yet. _

Nicky’s brow furrows, the shadows between them Bernini-esque in their definition, soft and satin as marble. Joe reaches out a thumb and presses out the wrinkles. Nicky allows the touch and  _ oh how it thrills him that he allows it with the coffee shop bustling around them _ .

Joe could sing, could dance, could fall down and weep for the fact that he was with his beloved, holding hands and sipping cappuccinos as the world bustled around them, as the world  _ saw them _ . Nicky was still nervous, Joe could tell by the tap of his foot and the pulse jumping in his throat, the way he looked around like any moment a teacher might come by and catch them, nevermind they were nearly twenty years out of school. 

It did not hurt him that Nicky was scared. There was no shame in being afraid, but it was the fact that Nicky was brave enough to try. That he looked into the eyes of his fear and said that what he felt for Joe was stronger. It was not that Joe didn’t think he deserved the man. He knew Nicky, knew him for all his vicious faults and cruel words and cowardice. It was that he knew he could be just as awful and he feared the possibility that things would end the same as before.

_ The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting the same result _ .

Damn him to be a fool, but Joe could feel himself slipping further and further back into love. 

“I  _ am _ good with animals,” Nicky insists. “Your cat is just a  _ malvagio bastardo _ ” 

“Yes, he is,” Joe says genially, laughing over his tiny cup “I should leave him in the gutter where he belongs.” 

Nicky hisses at him disapprovingly and crunches on a biscotti. They had traveled nearly thirty minutes by foot through the city to find this singular Italian deli that Nicky  _ insisted _ was the only genuine Italian cuisine he’d tasted. Joe knew he had long been spoiled by his mother's cooking and was always looking for a suitable replacement. It was the kind of spoiled desire that shifted between being endearing and frustrating. Currently, it was the former and Joe reaches down to squeeze Nicky’s hand with a smile.

Nicky squeezes back.

_ How your touch thrills me, even the barest of touches sets my heart racing. _

Once, Joe would have said so. He would have whispered it in Nicky’s ears, pressed his words of devotion into the other man's flesh with soft lips and vicious teeth. Breathed them into his mouth and drunkenly mumbled them into his chest. Now, he spoke them only to his own heart.

Yes, he was afraid of being hurt again. Even as he fell himself falling deeper and deeper in love with Nicky, he kept this final barrier up. A final failsafe against what he knew could happen. Nicky did not begrudge him. That was the hardest part.

_ ‘I understand Joe.’ _ He would say softly when Joe would turn away from his gaze, blinded by it like the sun. He would swipe a thumb over the back of Joe’s hand while they sat in a restaurant,  _ ‘I don’t expect things to be like they were. That life and those people that we were are dead. It is enough that the men we are now are men we get to share with each other.’ _

_ ‘And you call me an incurable romantic _ ’ Joe would say and Nicky would laugh and lean over to kiss him. Joe could feel his lips tremble, breath stutter with the elated terror of kissing him in public and Joe would melt with affection, with protectiveness, with respect for this man who was  _ trying _ . 

“Can I ask you something, Nicky?” Spoken in Italian, soft and hushed and slightly more private than English.

“Anything” comes the answer in kind.

Joe wasn’t the kind of man who really mulled over his words. He did not chew them before speaking, did not carefully pick and choose each phrase and syllable and sentence to craft the perfect expression of his thoughts. That was Nicky, careful, and cautious to the last. For Joe, he believed that if he spoke from the heart then those were the best words he could have possibly used.

So it is bluntly, though not unkindly, that he asks: 

“Where do you see this going? This thing between us?” 

It’s a question that he should have asked a thousand times their first go round. It was a question he had been too scared to hear the answer to. 

But it seems that Nicky is more affected than he. The other man visibly tenses, fingers clenching around Joes hand and mouth pressing together thinly. Grief, Joe realizes. Grief is the emotion wreaking havoc on the harsh planes of Nicky’s face. He takes a deep shuddering breath, catches himself and Joe straightens in alarm.

“What is wrong love?” 

_ Love _ . The word curls so tenderly from his tongue, sweet as chocolate and bitter as grapes. It’s the first time he’s called Nicky that, another step towards giving himself completely back to this man. 

Nicky waves a hand, paint-stained and calloused “It is nothing. Simple regret is all.” he smiles down at his drink, mouth parted slightly so that the white squares of his teeth catch the light. It is, to Joe’s eyes, the most painful expression he has ever seen. “I regret all the time we - I - wasted. All the time we lost.” 

Joe watches him. 

Nicky clears his throat. “But that does not really answer your question does that” He laughs, clenching something in Joe's heart. He looks up, shifts his body so he is not lounging in his seat like he stepped from a  _ Boucher _ . Turning the full bulk of himself to face Joe head-on he looks him directly in the eyes. 

“I want to love you, Joe.” Nicky says, out loud and for all the world to hear. He does not whisper it, does not glance around to see if anyone may be listening, maybe judging. Joe cannot  _ breathe _ for his feelings. “I want to love you without limit or fear or reservation, for as long as you will allow me to. I do not care where we go, what we call this thing between us, all I know Yusuf al Kaysani is that I would rather face purgatory unending than walk through my life without you.”

Joe surges across the table and kisses him. 

~

_ Oh my Joe, _

_ How I should have said those words a hundred, a thousand, a million, times before. How I should have told you what you meant to me when I had you the first time when we were young and spry and felt things with a violence that we thought could never mellow into adult maturity. I wish I had had the courage to tell you in those early days, but dear Joe, shame is such a powerful thing when you have been raised to feast upon it like communion wine.  _

_ Joe, dear beloved sweet Joe, I pray to God you will forgive me for what I am about to do. _

~

  
  


Sex with Nicky has always been sweet. 

Though Joe had experiences before and after him, Joe had spent nearly ten years buried in Nicky’s body. He knew every scar, mole, and pore of him. He knew which muscles tended to cramp, every spot that a simple press of lips could elicit a shiver. He knew  _ how _ Nicky liked to be fucked, slow, and liquid and worshipping. Knew that he could curse and beg until his voice went hoarse but had never once heard him blaspheme out to God. His mouth always tasted like mocha coffee and peppermint and cigarettes and though the cigarettes soured it, Joe loved it for the fact that it was  _ Nicky _ . 

They fell back into sex with all the ease that was not present in the more emotional aspects of their rekindling romance. 

They made love in the bed, on the couch, in the kitchen pressed up the counters as dinner burned, and in the shower as steam formed a protective cloud around them. They fucked, teeth bared and fingers bruising, fucked and loved, and drowned in each other. 

It was exhilarating, discovering Nicky all over again. Joe recommitted every line of his body to memory, ran his lips over his skin, and worshipped the hard lines and muscles of him. He learned that a blown-out knee from a friendly game of rugby made it hard for Nicky to put his legs over Joe’s shoulders like he used to, and learned that the tips of his ears were more sensitive now. A single puff of air made all the hair stand on end on his arms. He mapped out the new freckles and moles, kissed the laugh lines around Nicky’s mouth and the worry lines on his forehead.

They were beginning to grow old and there was a beauty in that. 

Nicky wore his shirts and stretched out the shoulders, Joe wore Nicky’s and stretched out the sleeves. They bickered about it, free and easy and it brings as much a thrill to Joe’s heart as flirting does.

They did, after all, find their love in the midst of a vicious school hood rivalry. 

~

_ A memory came to me the other day Joe. Perhaps a tad bittersweet, as all memories of childhood are. It is not the first time we kissed, that hurried angry smash of teeth and blood behind the local grocery store after yet another brawl, nor the second or third. Nor in truth, is it our fourth kiss that I recall and do believe me when I say I remember all those early ones.  _

_ It is the fifth kiss that came to me.  _

_ Do you remember it?  _

_ You convinced me to skip school that day. How I hated that. It was always me that was suspected to be the troublemaker, the instigator, and the plotter. But I was merely the scapegoat for our shenanigans. You, who everyone loved and respected, who charmed teachers and staff and fellow students alike with your bright smile and kind heart. Little did they know the devil you hid. So yes, though you may deny it, it was in fact your idea to skip. _

_ We made the near four-hour drive to the mountains, snow bright on their blue peaks and waterfalls frozen in winter stillness.  _

_ ‘Let’s see how far we can go. Let’s drive all the way to the border!’ You said. You with your adventurer's heart and free spirit.  _

_ I was always the more cautious of the two. But I agreed, intoxicated by the idea of so many hours spent alone with you. Yes, some of the appeal was the empty backseat and teenage hormones, but most was simply the idea of having the bright star that was Yusuf al-Kaysani all to my greedy self. We held hands the entire drive, my fingers did not tremble in yours and the highway yawned wide ahead of us, possibilities written in asphalt. _

_ You. Me. The open road.  _

_ I fantasized about running away, to where nobody knew our names, our sins, to build a life free of shame and fear and schoolwork. _

_ Even then, I was cynical enough to know it would never work.  _

_ We drove and drove through winding roads with skeleton trees that reached for us with angry claws and cloudless blue skies that bore witness to our secret.  _

_ We stopped in a small town for gas, took photos at a real-life phone booth, and admired the mountains in the backdrop.  _

_ We went as far as we could. Went until the houses became the rarity between the trees instead of the opposite and the roads were not plowed by any city or public service, but rather by the people who lived there. Went until the roads turned muddy and thick with snow a foot or more deep. Until your shitty little car with its two-wheel-drive got stuck in the snow at the bottom of a hill. We spent two hours pushing and cursing as the night crept upon us and it was you who began to worry, alone and without cell service or any way to call for help. _

_ I had never before been the protector of someone, the comforter, and as I watched you choke back your fear I thought I might still be the more terrified of the two of us as I drew you to my chest and held you. How my heart raced Joe, how it thundered across my ribcage like a whole herd of horses as you succumbed to my comfort, held me, and shivered as the cold of dusk surrounded us. _

_ “We can walk to get help,” I said, more confident than I felt “there's a house, not two miles back up the road” _

_ You were skeptical, wary of the chance of them refusing help, or extorting two stupid teenagers with nobody to watch out for them. I held you, kissed your forehead, kissed your lips, and then held your hand as we trudged through the dark to the nearest house. _

_ Perhaps not the romantic of our kisses, but it stays with me always. It was the first time I thought that maybe I could take care of something that was not myself. The first time I thought that what we had might be  _ **_something_ ** _.  _

_ I knew I loved you that night Joe.  _

_ The man there charged us two hundred dollars to tow our car and cursed us out the entire time but the way we laughed on the drive back, the way you pulled me into the backseat to fuck under the stars. _

_ It was well worth it.  _

~

“Tell me, do you believe in reincarnation?” 

Joe peered at Nicky over the tops of his reading glasses. Nicky was perched on the loveseat, legs tucked childishly up underneath him and Keane stubbornly purring on his lap, rubbing his furry cheeks against the corner of a Leipke Artbook. His eyes were still fixated somewhere on the pages though Joe could tell by the angle of his body that the majority of his attention was fixed on the upcoming conversation.

Joe sighs, taking off his glasses and tucking them securely into a breast pocket. This conversation seemed far more riveting than the freshman papers on Degas’ opinions of the women he painted. 

“Islam refutes the notion of it. We have one life, one death, and we are judged by Allah and found good or sinful.”

Nicky closes his book, Joe’s eye twitching as he dog ears it. “But?” 

“But I am not a very good Muslim and I believe that energy cannot be destroyed, only transferred. When we die, all our life force has to go  _ somewhere _ . Perhaps it is not reincarnation in the traditional sense, but I do believe we carry on in some capacity.” 

“But if energy can only be transferred then logic would dictate that it has to go somewhere of equal power. The energy of a human life has to go to another human life” Nicky argues. 

Joe regards the other man. They had had plans today to go visit the local botanical gardens and picnic, but Nicky had woken that morning complaining of a headache. Joe had shown up at 9 AM on the dot with a picnic basket of orange juice, eggs, fresh fruit, and toast. They picnicked on Nicky’s tiny living room floor instead and had since spent the day lounging around reading. 

“Why does the energy have to stay as one unit? Could it not be split up and distributed?” Joe grins, “You would make at least seven cats.” 

Nicky sniffs haughtily “please, don’t be rude I wouldn’t settle for less than twelve. But, that could not make sense, as eventually the energy would be split up smaller and smaller until it is too small to even exist.” 

Joe laughs, heart skipping a beat. Their relationship even before the romance had been built on conflict and that did not fade once love had entered the dynamic. They simply traded fists and bruises for words and debates. Art, of course, was a favorite, but anything from philosophy to science could come up. “Who are we to define what is too small? Just because we cannot numerically compute it does not mean it does not exist.” 

“The entire rules of division say that things do vanish when made small enough. You cannot argue with math” Nicky points out, leaning forwards. He was beautiful like this, entire body primed and engaged in the argument, like a warrior before battle. 

“Math is developed to fit the world, the world does not conform to math” Joe grips Nicky’s chin between thumb and forefinger “Sometimes, darling, logic is not concrete.” 

Kiss. Soft exhale, a press of teeth against plush lips, and a soft noise of pleasure. “So you do not believe we could return as a human being?” 

“Mmm kiss me again beloved.” Nicky does and Joe smiles “I did not say that, merely that it is not the only way.” 

“So, if you were to come back, what would it be as then?” Nicky asks, eyes sparking with fond amusement. 

Joe lets the weight of his head tilt back, stretching out the sore muscles of his neck pleasantly. There was a crack on the ceiling that looked remarkably similar to the poor victim in John Copley’s  _ Shark Attack _ . 

“A whale.” He decides firmly. 

Nicky’s face is skeptical “A whale?” 

“Yes,” Joe smiles “A whale. They’re said to be as intelligent as humans and I've always admired their song. Plus the entire ocean to explore? It would be exhilarating.” 

“Well, barring the fact that this does not fit into your energy logic, as a whale is much bigger than a human, I suppose that's as good an answer as any.” 

Joe purses his lips at Nicky playfully, can feel how his eyes grow heavy-lidded with fondness. Nicky’s wit was quiet and razor-sharp, meshing perfectly with Joe's own more sunny nature. “I’m going to  _ not _ allow myself to be drawn back into debate with you, as I am the bigger person in this relationship-”

“The whale” Nicky mumbles.

“- _ And, _ ” Joe continues pointedly “It’s more about the soul energy rather than true mass. Moving on, what would you come back as?” 

His lover's hands clench on the sides of the book, crinkling the pages slightly and Keane’s tail twitches “I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” he announces 

Nicky returns to his book, though Joe can now see that he has a journal hidden between the pages, pencil scratching over the surface carefully.

~

_ Dear Joe, _

_ You are divine and brilliant flame when you argue. How I adore it. _

~

It is not that they never fight anymore. No, Joe and Nicky were born of flame and conflict and flawed human emotion and they bickered and argued and fought just as often as they had as children, as young adults. They bickered quietly, they argued with rough voices and shouted across the room at each other until the neighbors banged on the walls in silence. They fell into frigid, icy silence that both were too stubborn to break for hours, days at a time. 

But.

But.

They apologized. In soft whispers, in gentle kisses and small acts of service. An apology dinner from Nicky, an article on the finer points of Tempera techniques of the thirteenth century from Joe. The words “I'm sorry” murmured against cheeks and with squeezed hands. They took their arguments and came out stronger on the other side, knowing that they had already been through the worst and bitterest fights a couple could. 

They were human and they came home from work irritable, tired, sad, and the only targets were each other and it wasn’t that they did not know how to direct their emotions into something healthy but simply that they were human and infallible. Joe loved the both of them for it. He was a man who thrived in the incomplete, in the grey area between black and white. Flaws were thrilling because they were human and even as They argued and spit insults Joe would watch Nicky, drawn up with righteous fury and wonder at him.

_ You are a vision, my love _ . 

They fight, they make up, they fuck and they love each other. 

It’s everything seventeen-year-old Joe could never have even dreamed of, the sort of idyllic future that seemed to only happen in books and movies and  _ never _ to men like them. It felt too good to be true.

For their six months, Nicky takes Joe out to a karaoke sushi bar. The place was grimy, the food more than a bit suspicious, and the crowds delightful. It’s the sort of place that only locals would know and frequent and was charming for the 60’s throwback decor. Joe loves it immensely. 

He belts out the lyrics to Marvin Gaye’s  _ I Got It Bad _ , pointing a comedic finger at Nicky’s mirthful face on the crowd. The bar cheers and catcalls him as the sweet Motown cords shake his body. He reaches into the crowd and yanks Nicky into a kiss, clinging to him like air. 

When they break apart, to the continued whistling of the crowd, Nicky’s eyes  _ shine _ and he leaps onto stage to follow up with a rousing bout of  _ The Way You Look Tonight _ . They cling to each other, sharing a microphone and laughing breathlessly. Nicky smells of sweat and aftershave and for once there is no trace of cigarettes on his skin. Joe inhales deep, crooning Sinatra into the curve of Nicky’s shoulder even long after they retire to their booth. Maybe they were beginning to be old men, but at least they were together. 

Joe holds Nicky’s hands under the table, wondering at the delicate makeup and musculature of them. They feel pale and unusually delicate under his touch, the skin pale and translucent to show periwinkle veins tracing underneath. His wrists bony, the curve of the joint a percent rounded edge. Joe can’t help but kiss them.

Another song comes on rotation, The Temptations  _ My Girl _ raising a chorus of delight across the bargoers. Nicky’s face lights up in delight and he turns to Joe, who laughs and accepts the offered hand. Nicky drags him to the dancefloor, their hands clasped and hips swinging with the upbeat rhythm. 

“Talkin’ bout my boy” Nicky sings cornily and Joe throws his head back laughing with his whole body and drapes his arms around the shorter man's neck as they dance amongst the other couples.

“I love you, Nicolo,” Joe says. 

Nicky's face glows with joy, with love, with the blue lights of the bar and with more adoration than Joe knows what to do with. 

They dance for hours to Nat King Cole, Nina Simone, and Tammi Terell, dance until their feet ache and sweat plasters their shirts to their skin. Nicky orders a sushi plate despite Joe’s mistrust of the quality and they stumble their way back to Joe’s apartment amidst wandering hands and lips. It’s a mad dash to the bedroom when they arrive, Nicky laughing as he half stumbles half hops out of his pants Joe follows behind, shedding shirt and tie in one go. They fall atop one another, kissing like teenagers and clutching like old lovers. Joe sings Whitney Houston in Nikky's ear and the other man's fingers knot through his curls desperately.

“Joe, Joe please darling do not make me wait.”

And far be it from Joe to deny his beloved but he pauses anyways, cupping Nicky’s face and drinking in the image of him with flushed cheeks and swollen lips. His eyes, already deep-set, looked positively bruised in the dim light, eyes fever bright and skin glowing like the moon. He was the most exquisite thing Joe has ever seen.

“You are beautiful” Nicky breathes “You are perfect in every way Joe, my Joe,” he says his name like he cannot bear for his mouth to form any other sound again, says it like he may never stop and Joe’s stomach  _ trembles _ . 

“I love you, Nicolo Di Genova,” Joe says honestly, without holds or barriers. “I have loved you for more years than not. You are my home when I am lost and my shield from the storm. You hold my heart, my soul, and my body in your hands. What I feel for you cannot be expressed or explained in any of the languages we know but I love you comes the closest to the feeling of necessity that I have for you.” Joe inhales shakily, Nicky’s face twisted and wretched with emotion, and Joe figures he looks much the same “So I say that I love you, in hopes that it translates even the barest hint of what you mean to me.” 

“I have missed your speeches,” Nicky says softly, kisses Joe’s eyelids where they are damp from emotion “I love you, Joe. I never stopped loving you, even in my most vile moments. I am sorry it took me so long to realize what was in front of me. Now please.” He punctuates his words with a roll of his hips “please let us continue before I perish of need.” 

Joe would never be strong enough to deny him. 

Nicky comes home early the next day from the studio violently ill. Joe strokes his hair as he clings to the toilet, brings him water and mouthwash, and toast to choke down and cannot resist a quiet  _ I warned you about the sushi _ . 

Nicky laughs, though it is forced, and begs Joe to sit beside him.

“Please stop fussing Yusuf, I will be alright. I just want you near me right now.” His voice trembled, fearful in a way that reminded Joe of when Nicky was young and too scared to even look his own mother in the eye for fear of what secrets she might find in his gaze. 

He had never seen the man affected by a little food poisoning so, but he imagined they were all allowed times of vulnerability and tucked him against his side. He ran fingers through his hair, kisses his sweaty temples, and hummed the songs from last night.

“You smell like chemicals and cleaner darling, you have to be more careful at work, some of those are toxic.” 

“I’ll keep that in mind” Nicky chokes around another heave, tries to smile through the stress lines bracketing his eyes. 

~

_ I worked so hard to hide it from you Joe. Took advantage of your good trusting heart and your love for me. You always did let emotions blind you, no matter how hard you worked to function by logic. It’s part of what I loved about you, part of what makes us such a good match. I would be so caught in my head, thinking and wondering and calculating, if not for you. And I’d like to think I helped you remember to take a step back and think at times.  _

_ We couldn’t have only been bad for each other. _

_ Right? _

_ Joe, I hope you forgive me. I suppose it will not matter in the end, of course. I have not prayed in a long time, not since I turned my back on priesthood, but God I pray you forgive me for my selfish heart. _

~

“You are out of shape  _ mi amor! _ ” Joe laughs down the trail where Nicky was half bent over, huffing and puffing. 

Though Joe had gained a modest few inches around his middle since his twenties, he still liked to imagine he lived an active enough life between the gym and outdoor activities. Nicky, it seemed, had kept his good figure on genetic metabolism alone.

Joe picks his way carefully back down the mountain -his idea of a weekend getaway, hiking, camping under the stars, fishing, maybe some frisky tent sex - and offers his water bottle to the still-winded Nicky. His lover accepts it gratefully, taking great pulls as water drips down his chin. 

“We can rest for a bit,” Joe continues, tipping his head back and examining the sun sitting high in the sky. 

“No, no” Nicky shakes his head, sweat beading deliciously at his temples and carving tracks through the dust on his neck “I just need a moment - The altitude…”

“That sounds like an excuse to me darling, there's no shame to admit that perhaps you’re not as spry as you were ten years ago.” Joe teases.

Nicky glares at him and pours some of the water over his head, shaking himself so the droplets spatter Joe's face. His gut clenches at the sight of his partner sweaty with hair and shirt plastered to his skin. 

“I am not an invalid” Nicky snaps, pushing himself up and forward, long legs putting several yards of distance between Joe before he registers the genuine anger in Nicky’s voice. 

Joe jogs after him, catches Nicky’s elbow, and pulls the other man to face him. Nicky’s face is red with exertion, scrunched up with frustration and his gaze remains fixed stubbornly on a spot beyond Joe’s shoulder. Joe reaches out a finger and smooths away the furrows between Nicky’s brows, curls his finger over the arch of his eye, and cups his cheek.

“I’m sorry.” he says, the apology rolling easily off his tongue “I did not realize I was prodding at a sore spot.” 

Nicky exhales slowly, face relaxing and eyes closing as he leans into Joe’s touch. He shakes his head “No, it is not a sore spot. I’m just a little irritable it seems. The sun is very hot.” 

Joe glances over his shoulder, cards his fingers through Nicky’s sweaty bangs “there’s shade further up if you can make it love.” He offers “just a little farther.” 

“Just a little further” Nicky agrees grimly. 

~

_ That night you asked me a question I had only dared dream of. Words I had pictured a thousand different ways in a thousand different tones and a thousand different scenarios. My mother would tell fond tales of her own wedding and my teeth would ache with jealous bitterness.  _

_ Why are we not married yet? _

_ I laughed, laughed because it was better than crying and looked over to where you were laid out on your blanket, taking in all the stars in the sky. I thought the enormity of you was more beautiful than any long-dead sun.  _

_ “Because no church would have you and no mosque would accept me. And since I do not see you taking the eucharist anytime soon nor I performing al-fajr, we will continue to live in sin.”  _

_ You laughed, delighted as you always were whenever I poked fun at Church. It pleased me, just as it did as a child. I could not help myself and set my book aside to curl against you, hand over your chest to feel the rise and fall of it. _

_ Silence was never something we struggled with and I found myself falling asleep against you as it sat round us like a blanket. _

_ “What a marvel it is to be alive, Nicky” You whispered. _

_ My body ached with all the mortal pains of living, my knees sore and swollen, my back bruised from carrying our heavy packs, head aching from dehydration. But I knew what you meant, knew the magic of recognizing one's own existence in the very moment that it happens, a combination of excitement and fear.  _

_ How terrifying it is to be alive, how wondrous.  _

_ Why are we not married yet Joe? _

_ Because even in all my infinite greed, I could not subject you to that. _

~

Christmas wasn’t a momentous occasion for him. Joe, because he did not celebrate, and Nicky because it had always been more centered around church than not, and with the way his faith had been tainted he was not particularly inclined to celebrate. 

Instead, they made the most of the time off. Joe caught up on syllabus-writing and his own personal studies and Nicky made himself well-acquainted with Joe's bed. It worried Joe a bit, how much Nicky slept during those long winter days, but he knew his love had been working non-stop since coming to the city. He supposed the man deserved a few weeks rest.

Besides, it was no hardship to crawl into bed with a drowsy and sleep-warm Nicky, wrapping arms around his torso and pressing gentle kisses to the back of his neck where the hair was sweaty from rest. 

“You work too much  _ habibi _ , see how your body is crashing?” he chides gently. 

Nicky sighs sleepily, shifts his body closer back against Joe’s chest - oh how it makes his heart flutter with love- and presses a gentle kiss to Joe’s knuckles.

“I think I shall become a house husband” he announces “Cook you meals and lounge about in bed all day for you to come home from your professor duties.” 

“An apron  _ would  _ be quite becoming on you.” Joe hums and noses along the shell of Nicky’s ear. His lover's body felt chilled despite the blankets and thick sweater and he presses his hands to Nicky’s bare stomach, rubbing up and down the sparse hair on his chest to warm him up. 

“It would make my pecs look fantastic” Nicky agrees “but you must get tenure first, I live an expensive lifestyle and it will need to be supported.” 

“Just a few years love, be patient” Joe chuckles against his pulse point, which flutters irregularly. 

-

Christmas morning has Booker and Nile showing up with a bottle of orange juice and champagne apiece, already delightfully tipsy. They drink mimosas over Joe's tiny island counter and nobody comments on the way Booker rests a tender hand on Nile’s hip or the way her eyes light up when he’s near. There're deep bags under Nicky’s eyes despite all his resting but he’s smiling and content as they open presents.

It took Joe weeks to figure out what to get Nicky, which was surprising to him and exhausting to Nile, who had to put up with his whining about what to get someone like Nicky who cared very little for material things.

“Just write him a poem or something you silly romantic. Or paint him a picture, put your degree to use.”

“My degree is in  _ studying  _ art Nile, not creating it.” 

It’s entirely an accident that he stumbles on the gift, dragged into a series of antique shoppes by Booker who was desperately looking for a specific copy of  _ Dangerous Liasons _ by Pierre Choderlos De Laclos for Nile. Tucked between two books of geography, well away from Bookers muffled frustrated curses as he tries to navigate a pile of chairs, Joe finds a 1960’s Color plate Lithograph Manet Artbook, complete with a Christmas note in Hungarian from an aunt to a niece wishing her well after the uprisings. It’s slightly mold damaged but the colors are still bright and it’s exactly the sort of personal piece of history that his lover adores. He doesn’t even bat an eye at the exorbitant price of nearly two hundred dollars, or the fact that the elderly shopkeeper only takes cash. It’s well worth the tenderly delighted face Nicky makes as he unwraps it, turning the pages with careful fingers and smoothing down the pages to look at the paintings. 

“It’s perfect, thank you love” he whispers softly. Joe kisses his temple, clutching his own ‘ _ Property of Nicky Di Genoa _ ’ Sweater that Nicky had knitted for him. 

‘ _ I had a lot of free time in seminary school’ he explained with a hapless shrug. Joe didn't think he could love the man any more than he did already _ . 

Nile squeals in delight over the book in its original French print, making Booker promise to help her translate it. Joe and Nicky smugly follow it up with two tickets to a local Toulouse-Lautrec Exhibit.

“For you and any beau of your choosing” Nicky teases with a wink. 

For Booker's gift, all three had come together. It was Niles' idea, Joe picked out the framing and fabric and Nicky spirited it all away to his studio to put together. The sixth-month sober chip sat in its frame, glinting slightly in the light from the TV as the Frenchman stares down at it silently.

“If you don’t like it we can get something-” Nile starts nervously and Booker cuts her off with a raised hand. Joe watches the other man set the frame aside with careful fingers before pivoting to take Nile’s hands in his own.

“I love it,” He says hoarsely, looks around at all of them, Nile in her candy cane pajamas, Nicky and Joe in matching sweaters, Keane surreptitiously attempting to murder a stray piece of ribbon. “I love you all- thank you- this is-” he cuts himself off, swallowing several times. His shone wetly and he reaches up to wipe them. Joe’s own throat feels tight. 

“We are family” Nicky declares steadily. He reaches out and takes Joe’s hand, squeezing tightly. Joe returns the gesture “And we are proud of you Book. You deserve this.” 

“Family…” Booker repeats with a breathless laugh “Thank you” he says again “You are better friends than any man deserves.” 

Nile leans over to kiss his cheek and now Joe cannot help a low whistle. She throws a pillow at his head. 

_

New Years passes without fanfare. Joe and Nicky kiss under fireworks and fuck until the sun comes up, Nicky’s fingers strong and sure on Joe’s hips, his eyes lit with a strange sort of feverish desperation. 

“Here’s to another year my love” Joe whispers and Nicky kisses him all the more desperately. 

Winter break ends and classes resume, Joe being called in to take over a Humanities I course for an associate who was on maternity leave. It had been a good few years since he’d had to teach a 100 level course and he found himself unexpectedly nervous. Freshmen were notoriously difficult to keep engaged at the best of times. 

Still, he finds himself sliding into the familiar syllabus as he stares up at the lecture hall. Faces ranged from asleep to rapturous and he spreads his hands in a typical pleading professor pose.

“Why do we make art?” 

It’s a rhetorical question, a simple opener to the course, but a bright-eyed girl in the front row raises her hand anyways. Joe indulges her, gesturing with a hand.

“To tell stories,” she says confidently, back straight as her neatly stacked textbooks.

Joe can’t help but smile fondly, reminded of himself, and his confidence in always having the answer “And why do we tell stories? Is it to connect? To remember? To have the luxury of other people listen to us?”

The girl's brow furrows and Joe clicks the lights of the projector, pulling up an image of Artemisia Gentileschi's  _ Susanna and the Elders. _ The woman leans away from the leering old men, face dewy and submissive with fear, skin as delicate as the brush strokes. “The first thing you will find is that Art is far more connected to psychology and you would expect.” Joe takes a deep breath and clicks to the second slide, this time of the X-ray of the underpainting. Susanna’s face was contorted, face twisted in rage and fear and a knife clutched desperately between her fingers as she fights off her attackers. “The second thing you will learn is that there is no such thing as a true answer in this field.” 

The class murmurs, looks of discomfort on many faces at the blatant agony in Susanna’s expression. 

“Artemisia Gentileschi was attacked and raped when she was eighteen years old by a student of her fathers, also an artist, as well as by another man” Joe clicks to another painting, this time of Judith and the slaying of Holofernes. “During her assault, she cried out to another woman tenant of her fathers and a supposed friend, who ignored her pleas for help. From that point forwards her work always depicted not just female suffering in a rawer form, but also constant solidarity between women, as if to make up for the lack of female support in her own life.” Joe smiles faintly “of course, that is just  _ my _ opinion.” 

He looks out over the faces, rapt with attention now, and has to bite back a pleased smile. The door at the back of the auditorium cracks open and Nicky slips inside silently, settling himself into a far seat. Joe’s body warms with pleasure and he returns his attention to the students. 

“You will find that art history is often dark, mostly tragic, and rarely has a happy ending. So then tell me, again  _ why _ do we create art?” 

Silence this time, the girl from before scribbling furiously in her notebook, face alight with emotion. 

“I believe that we create art out of fear.” Joe says, resting back against the desk “yes there is beauty and love and all the positives to it, but we create art because we fear the thought of being forgotten, of not leaving our mark on the world. We fear the idea that someday all we become is dust and bones and will eventually be forgotten by all who knew us. So we create art as...a grave marker so to speak. But one that reaches far past a cemetery.” 

There’s no voices, no raised hands, just the sound of pencils scratching on notebooks. Joe lets out a slow breath, catches Nicky’s eyes, and smiles “If you go into this course and this field with the question ‘what did this artist fear?’ I promise you, there will be a thousand and one answers. But the first and foremost one will always be ‘Permanence” 

Joe waits for any more questions, can feel Nicky’s gaze burning into him from the shadows of the lecture hall and he forces himself to turn back to the projector. 

“Now, if you could open your syllabus to the third page I would like to run through a series of vocab terms we will be using this semester, starting with ‘contrapposto’...” 

_

“I hope my lecture didn’t bore you.” 

Nicky looks up at him, squinting slightly against the bright lights of the auditorium as the last of the freshman file out the door. A sheen of sweat sits around his temples, dampening the fine hairs by his ears. Joe desperately wants to lick the saltiness away and it is only the knowledge of the four security cameras in the room that stops him. He does allow himself a chaste kiss, however. 

“Bore me?” Nicky sounds affronted, brow creasing “Joe watching you teach is my favorite. You are so passionate, so articulate, so smart. It’s a gift.” 

His cheeks are hot and he busies himself with polishing his glasses, suddenly shy. There had been many times of the years that he’d been told he did not belong in this world, too young, too poor, too brown, as if the idea of subjectivity in art only applied if one was in a certain tax bracket and pale enough to need spray tans. And it was not that Joe needed Nicky’s validation, no he knew where he belonged all on his own thank you very much. But it was nice to be admired by the man he loved. 

“But.” Nicky adds “I disagree with what you said about why we create art.” 

“Oh do you?” Joe asks playfully, unable to help himself from leaning in for another kiss. 

“I do.” Nicky says, solemn as the priest he almost became “We don’t create art to not be forgotten, we create art so the ones we leave behind aren’t quite so alone.” 

~

_ Dear Joe, _

_ In another life, I would be there for it all. I would have been brave enough to come out to my mother the proper way, I would have held your hand strong and brave from the start and we would not have wasted years upon years in the hellish limbo that was the closet. I would have been there for your thesis argument, celebrated your first teaching job.  _

_ I would be there for you to reach tenure, for you to go grey and soft, to age and grow and live your life. Perhaps there would be children, grandchildren, and if not at least a few godchildren and nieces and nephews running about. We would drink wine and go to art museums and travel the world. We would argue about the validity of Modernism and postmodernism, would fight and makeup, and yes, perhaps get married.  _

_ I would love you with all the corners and soft edges of my heart and you would do the same. _

_ There would be dozens of Christmases and New Years and birthdays. I would finally meet your parents as your partner and perhaps one day my mother would welcome us into her home with love in her heart... _

_ Joe, my love, it was not meant to be.  _

~

In hindsight, Joe should have seen it coming.

He knew when the first domino in the final series of events first fell, could recall the very moment. 

He’d thought to surprise Nicky at his studio, a home-cooked meal in tupperware under one arm. Nicky had been losing weight recently, citing the stress of the job and Joe could empathize. He knew how focused Nicky was, how he would paint and paint and paint over the same spot until he had reached the perfect touch upon a piece. That perfectionism was admirable, but Joe had wished it wasn’t to the detriment of his love's health. 

At first, he couldn’t find him, wandering through stacks of easels and bare frames larger than he was tall. The tall floor-to-ceiling windows along one wall warmed the large space pleasantly and it smelled of turpentine, cleaner, and old wood. He could see a Georgette Chen spread across a hot table, the rotten stretcher leaning against the wall. The contraption hissed softly as it used heat and tension to flatten out the canvass. He has to stop for a moment to admire the Singaporean post-Impressionist's work. 

By the time he breaks him out of his academic study of her brushwork, her mastery of blues and reds, and the particular Van-Gogh-esque quality of her blue background, he can hear Nicky’s voice filtering inaudibly from the back office. He thinks as he steps closer, that Nicky is with a client at first. But the tone of his voice is too intense, too concerned for it to be a simple business deal and the protective core of Joe has him opening the door quietly. 

Nicky sits like a warrior before battle, one hand gripping the phone white-knuckled and the other the desk with equal pressure. His body is a single line of tension, face cut from brutal granite, and eyes stormy with emotion. Joe wants nothing more than to reach out and smooth away the worry between Nicky’s eyes and he does. 

“Are you sure?” Nicky asks, as grave as it had been at his father's funeral, seventeen and suddenly ‘the man of the house’. Joe could still remember how he had ached to reach out and take his grieving partner's hand in comfort. He does so now, squeezing deeply. There’s another voice on the other side of the fone, inaudible but recognizable as a woman. Nicky clears his throat and nods “Thank you. No no really, I appreciate it, you’re just doing your job.” He hands up, placing the phone on the hook with delicate fingers like it might explode on him before staring out the window, face unreadable. 

“Who was that?” Joe asks, a million possibilities flying through his head “is your mother-”

“My mother is fine” Nicky interrupts “not that she would tell me if she wasn’t.” He rubs a thumb over the back of Joe's hand as if to apologize for his abruptness “No, an old family friend died quite suddenly. His secretary was just delivering the news.” 

Joe props his hip up on the desk, rubs Nicky’s hand between both his own, and bends down to kiss the knuckles “I’m sorry” he says softly “Are you alright?” 

His lover looked dazed, as if he had just been woken from a deep sleep, or stepped away from an awful car wreck. It was concerning, but it reminded Joe of the same quiet grief of Nicky’s father's death. “Yes,” he says faintly “yes I am alright.”

Bending down to kiss him, Joe is surprised at the fervor with which Nicky returns it. Hungry teeth and hungry hands seek to devour Joe and he gives himself over willingly as Nicky spreads him out across the heavy oak desk. He doesn’t realize it then, but even though they have sex many times after, this was Nicky’s goodbye. 

~

_ Sweetest Joe, _

_ How lovely you were, spread out amongst the art but still the greatest prize in a studio of treasures. How I wished I could drown myself in your body, how I wished I could carve myself a Nicky-sizes space in your chest cavity and curl up there forevermore. In a place where grief and pain and death could not reach us.  _

_ If only.  _

~

Joe’s world falls apart like this:

A rainy night, spring just beginning to push green into the world, crocuses still tightly shut but daring to show their brilliant purple and white buds to the sunlight. 

A dinner date, an attempt to draw Nicky out of the gloomy spell he had been in since the phone call. It had been three months since that day, since Nicky had worshipped Joe’s body like it was communion. He claimed it was the stress of work, he had received a particularly damaged Borovikovsky. Joe loved him enough to accept the excuse. 

A drive home, Nicky’s fingers tight on the wheel, and the windshield wipers the only defense against the lashing rain. Tension sat thick in the car, curling unpleasantly on Joe’s tongue. He thinks it is the precursor to a fight and is wracking his brain to think of what may have happened. 

He comes up blank. 

Nicky puts the car in park, knuckles curved and elegant on the gear shift. He exhales sharply through his nose, a quick noise. Suddenly, Joe tries to remember the last time he had heard Nicky’s odd little laugh. For a second time, he cannot recall. 

“My contract with the museum is ending,” Nicky says finally and Joe feels relief tingle through his entire body.

He laughs quietly and takes Nicky’s hand “is that all love? You had me scared.” his partner's silence continues, eyes near black in the night as the streaking rain reflects over his face. For a sudden terrifying moment, Joe doesn’t quite recognize him, the odd lighting in the car causing his eyes and cheeks to look particularly sunken. “I do not mind doing things long distance. I can visit on holidays and summers of course I can come to stay with you. We can make it work darling.” 

Nicky rubs a hand over his mouth and Joe realizes that it is not just rainwater reflecting off the windshield onto his face. His cheeks are wet as he cries silently. 

“Nicky…” Joe says softly, ice beginning to form in his chest. He was not a stupid man, and he knew his lover better than anyone in the world. Nicky did not need to  _ speak _ for Joe to understand him. “You do not intend to continue the relationship when you leave.”

Nicky’s voice is hoarse, wooden. “No.” 

Joe nods slowly looking out to the road illuminated by the headlights. “Can I ask why?” He feels numb, he feels torn into a million little pieces. If he were to be stabbed, shot, beaten bloody and bruised, he thinks that it would hurt less than this. 

Nicky doesn’t answer and Joe feels a deep wash of rage over him. Academically he knows that it is simply fear and pain and other vulnerable emotions translated into a more defensive reaction. He knows the science, the psychology, and the  _ why _ of it. But goodness he is still  _ so angry _ . 

Quietly, Joe unbuckles his seatbelt. He stands. Opens the door. Steps out into the pouring rain. It soaks him quickly, fogging up his glasses, and plastering his clothes to his body. He grips the car door as if he could bend the metal under his fingers. 

“I guess this is goodbye then.” 

Nicky shudders out a breath as if he had been stabbed and god even in his anger Joe wants to comfort him. “At least let me drive you the rest of the way home.” Nicky croaks.

“No.” Joe’s throat is tight, burning with the held back tears but he  _ refuses _ to let this man see him cry “No, Nicky, I think it’s best that I walk home.” He fantasizes about slamming the car door, a quick sharp movement that will rock the entire vehicle. The spiderweb of cracks that would form across the window, glass tinkling down over the street like the goddamn pieces of his heart. He indulges in the thought for a moment and then closes the door with a terrible final gentleness. 

  
  


“I sincerely wish,” Joe says steadily, far steadier than he feels “That I had never met you, Nicolo Di Genoa” 

He leaves like this:

He turns. Legs wooden, heartbeat uneven with grief. Steps up onto the sidewalk and shoves his hands in his pockets. He’s soaked to the bone, waterlogged and drenched but he burns with angry betrayal. He walks down the sidewalk, breath forming angry clouds in front of him.

Joe had known from the start, had warned his heart against letting Nicky back in. The definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. He had known the kind of man that Nicky was, known his cowardice and his selfishness and all his flaws. He had fallen for him anyways, though perhaps, he had never truly fallen out of love.

Joe leaves like this:

With tears upon his cheeks kissed away by the rain. 

_

It takes Nile and Booker two weeks to convince him to get out of bed. He uses up every day of sick leave that he has, feeds himself and Keane, and does all the bare necessities of life. Beyond that is more than he can bear. It takes them another eight months to put him back together. He returns to classes, eats, and goes out with friends. He calls his mother and visits his sister and her new baby. He dances and laughs and even dates, even if they are just casual. 

He doesn’ let Nicky ruin his life. Even if it is out of spite, he puts himself back together piece by piece all on his own. And yes, perhaps he cannot still bring himself to think of Nicky, cannot go to their favorite restaurant anymore, takes the longer route from campus because his normal one passes his studio. He throws out the couch they bought together after they broke Joe’s old one, throws out his sheets, and buys new pots and pans. He’s not perfect, but he’s healing. 

  
  


Booker and Nile get engaged. Booker asks Joe to be his best man, Nile asks him to help her pick out a dress with the rest of her bridesmaids. Joe agrees to both. 

Life moves on. 

  
  


Joe receives a letter in the mail, small and unobtrusive amongst the pile of bills and scams. The gold lettering on it is confusing to him for a moment until he realizes that it is written in Italian. 

He contemplates throwing it out. 

The wax seal rips easily under his thumb and he pulls out the small square of cardstock. He almost throws up when he sees the photo of Nicky, printed in soft black and white. He’s smiling up at the camera fondly, eyes crinkled and mouth soft. A quiet secret smile, a genuine one.

He does throw up at the text beneath it.

_ Una Celebrazione della vita _

_ In amorevole memoria _

He calls Nile, incoherent and sobbing, wailing as if his heart may break, unsure if he’s perhaps trapped in a nightmare. She spends more time at Booker's place than not these days and so it’s mere minutes before they both show up, Nile picking Joe up off the floor and Booker taking the letter with delicate hands. 

He curses in bloody french and Joe snatches it from his hand protectively. 

“I don’t understand.” Is all he can say, repeating it over and over as if the funeral invitation itself might explain. 

~

_ Joe, you have to understand. _

_ I have always been a vicious needs-based creature. I am only human. If perhaps, I could explain my motivations, it might make you hate me less. I decided that my need to see you and love you again was worth the price of breaking your heart again but in doing so I did not consider the needs of your heart and God how that makes me a selfish man to the bone.  _

_ Many men suffer from the demons of pride or sloth or greed and even wrath. Mine has always been selfishness. _

_ I ruined things. From the very beginning, when our eyes first met and I fell in love with you but decided instead that the emotion must be hate, I had ruined things. Time and time again I should have stepped up and I did not, I let all the ugly things in the world control me.  _

_ I wanted to set things right. I wanted to do things properly this time around, without fear or hatred or prejudice. I wanted to love you like I should have done and I did. For one goddamn blessed year, I did. I never stopped loving you Joe, never for a moment. If it is any consolation, you cannot hate me more than I do myself. I am not perfect, I am not even pure, but Joe please believe that I loved you with every fiber of my being. You have to believe that, if nothing else.  _

_ Forgive me, I thought we would have had more time. _

~

The funeral parlor is filled with old Italian men and women. 

Joe stands in a corner, hands in pockets, and leaning against the impenetrable force that was a protective Nile. She held her plate of hors d'oeuvres with chin raised ready for battle and he has never been more grateful for the woman. Booker stood at his shoulder and for once Joe wished viciously that the man had not gotten sober.

He could really use a drink right about now. 

He had shaken Nicky’s mother's hand, murmured his condolences and tried to bite back the angry words about her lack of presence in the man's life over the past decade, and kissed his sister on the cheek. 

Unable to bring himself to enter the viewing room, he hovers by the entrance. He knows he would fall to pieces at the sight of Nicky’s face, preserved as a statue in formaldehyde. He knows the creases between his brows will never fold so again, his mouth never form their laughing lines. His eyes would be closed, clouded under the lids, or perhaps sunken in as the moisture left the body. Joe would drop down dead at the sight.

He knows he will not be able to go to the funeral. 

Joe thinks he is angry. He doesn’t really know, he is mostly numb and very much so grieving. But he cannot help but wonder why Nicky had  _ lied  _ to him.

“He was healthy, Nile'’ he whispers softly “he was so healthy I don't understand just a year-” Even as he says it he thinks of the way Nicky’s body had always been cold. The fatigue, the circles under his eyes, the bouts of food poisonings. The lost weight and lack of appetite begged off as stress. Lies from the start. 

The crowd parts, making way for a woman with dark close-cropped hair. Her eyes are shrewd, her face lined but beautiful and the severe black suit compliments her muscular lithe body. She’s headed right for Joe and Nile steps in front of him protectively. The woman barely spares her a glance, looking over her head to lock eyes with Joe.

“Al-Kaysani?” she asks. He nods, not sure if he’d be able to speak. This close he can see the deep bags under her eyes, the faint smell of booze on her breath. She nods “My name is Andy, I’m a friend of Nicky’s.” 

“So is everyone here” he answers rawly.

Andy laughs, a dark little chuckle “Look, I don’t know what you’re feeling right now and I’m not here to offer my condolences but I do have something for you.” 

Joe realizes there is a box clutched in her hands, polished dark wood, and carved in trees and birds. It’s clearly handmade, most certainly from Nicky’s hometown knowing his sentimentality. 

“I don’t want it” he finds himself saying. He’s shaking, the careful numbness he’s constructed around this entire trauma beginning to wear thin.

_ Nicky is dead Nicky is dead Nicky is dead- _

Booker puts a steadying hand on his shoulder. 

Andy narrows her eyes at him “Look, look inside or not, it’s no skin off my back but my wife Quynh made me promise to give these to you.  _ Nicky _ made us promise.” 

“Nicky made you…” Joe echos faintly and finds himself reaching out. The wood is cool and smooth under his fingertips, warm where Andy had been holding it. His tongue feels heavy, tied in knots “Thank you- where. Where is your wife I could thank-”

He’s cut off by the sudden agonizing grief in Andy’s face. “They went through chemo together” is all she says and Joe bites his tongue hard enough to feel blood.

“I’m sorry” he whispers.

Andy clears her throat, running a shaking hand through her hair “Yeah. Me too.” 

Joe falls silent, clutching the box with white-tipped fingers. Grief was an ugly thing and there’s no sense of quiet solidarity between him and this woman who had also lost her love.

It was just awkward, both of them caught in their quiet storms of grief and anger. 

“He also wanted me to give you these,” Andy says, holding out a bundle of letters and  _ god _ Joe feels he could fall to the ground right then and there and weep. He accepts them with shaking fingers, the paper crinkling under his grip. Andy nods as if in satisfaction “I also wrote my number down...if you ever want to...talk.” 

Having said her piece she does not wait for thanks, but turns on her heel and strides out of the building, leaving Joe feeling like he’s lost at sea. He turns to Nile, feeling vaguely dazed.

“I want to go home.” 

~

_ Cancer of the lymphatic system. Symptoms include enlarged lymph nodes, weight loss, and fatigue. _

_ Treatments include medication, chemotherapy, and radiation treatment. _

_ That is what they told me I had. They told me it would be easy to beat, would be over sooner than I knew it and I could return to my life. And though it was not my first brush with death, it was certainly an eye-opening one. _

_ The treatment center was in your city. _

_ I packed up my things and moved my whole life back to you. I did not tell you because I did not want it to taint what we could have. Forgive me for thinking so lowly of you, but I did not want you to love me out of pity. _

_ They did not tell me that it would metastasize to my bones, causing joint pain and irritability, and further exhaustion. They did not tell me it could go to my brain.  _

_ You have to understand, I was living two lives, Joe. With you, I was just Nicky. I lived as if nothing was wrong and loved you like we had all the time in the world ahead of us. I had friends and a career that seemed to be taking off at lightning speed. And then I was also Nicky Who Was Sick. Looked at with pity by fellow patients and poked and prodded like a lab mouse by doctors. _

_ They had never seen cancer so aggressive they claimed. I could still beat it. They claimed. _

_ I’m sorry if my handwriting is a little shaky darling, I am very tired and the pencil is hard to hold. _

~

The letters Joe could not bring himself to open yet. He could not yet face Nicky’s handwriting, Nicky’s voice echoing in his head as he read his words. His tie and jacket lay abandoned on the couch, the apartment empty as he politely but firmly kicked Booker and Nile out.

He needed to be alone.

The box sits on his counter, and Joe could swear he can feel Nicky’s presence, his energy, pulsating from it. He unbuttons the top two buttons of his dress shirt, pours him two knuckles worth of whiskey, and throws it back like he was still a post-grad. It hits him like a punch, burning its way into his stomach but it braces him enough to sit down and open the lid of the box. 

~

_ I know you must hate me, Joe. I know you must be angry and bitter and confused. I understand. What I did was cruel at best. I could explain and reason and I suppose this entire letter is a narration of why. But at the end of the day, I know that I have committed sin against you and all I can ask is your forgiveness. _

_ For lying _

_ For hurting you _

_ For breaking your heart over and over oh Joe forgive my emotion but I do not know why I did all this to you. I thought it was the right thing, the best thing, to give us both some final good memories. And for a while there was hope. Before the spring, before the call that told me in no uncertain terms that I was going to die.  _

_ Do you remember that day? That day in the studio when I said goodbye to you with my lips and body because I had not the words to reveal my great deception. _

_ Everyone changes Joe, but I did no so much that I could bear the thought of living without you. And maybe it would have been better to have let myself fade into the background of your life, nothing more than the unpleasant memory of an ex-boyfriend in your twenties.  _

_ We will never know now, what could have been.  _

~

The first thing the box contains is a neatly folded receipt paper. Joe’s face is drawn on it in blue ball-point pen, glasses slipping off his nose and lit by candlelight. The bold script at the top read the Old Garde Bar and Joe knows exactly which dinner this is from. 

The second treasure is a recipe for  _ Tagliatelle Genovese _ , one of Joe’s favorites. It is carefully handwritten, illuminated with sketches of the ingredients, and the dish itself steaming at the very top. 

The third and fourth, two sweatshirts that Joe had long thought lost; apparently only stolen. After a moment's hesitation, he holds them up to his nose and inhales deeply. Two heartbeats, each a punch to the stomach. He stands, pours himself another glass of whiskey, downs it in one gulp.

They smelled just like Nicky.

The fifth and final object is wrapped in a note, the paper ragged where it was torn from a notebook. It flutters to the table and Joe has to swallow several times, pick it up with drunken fingers and smooth it out to read. 

How Nicky’s handwriting, careful and elegant and always pretty enough that the more close-minded bullies had teased him for it being feminine, hurt him. 

_ We do not create art for fear of being forgotten, Joe. We create art so that the ones we leave behind still have something of us _ . 

Setting the note aside, Joe picks up the tiny 5x5 square canvas. He recognizes the image instantly, a perfect replica of a photo Nile had taken of them that past September. It had still been warm enough that both men were only wearing light sweaters, standing on a balcony after dinner during the sunset. Their bodies curved towards each other like two commas, the shadows deep enough that most of their features were not visible aside from the gentle curve of their lips and the devotion in their eyes. Nicky was laughing slightly, more with his eyes than his mouth as usual and Joe’s gaze was locked on Nicky’s lips with intention. It was beautiful, every brushstroke and color choice familiar as Nicky’s style. Joe knew it like he knew a Botticelli. 

He breaks then, great gasping sobs tearing from his chest, tears flowing down his cheeks as if they may never stop. He reaches for the letters, pulling them open in no particular order and consuming a dead man's words as if this were his holy script.

~

_ I love you, Joe.  _

_ That is all I can say. No matter what I have done, no matter where you go on in that wonderful life of yours know that  _ **_I love you_ ** _. Wholly. Completely. Without barriers and with every single fiber of my being. When my flesh is long gone and my bones have turned to dust whatever energy is left of me will still  _ **_love_ ** _ you, Joe. If reincarnation exists and we find ourselves again upon this world I promise you that I will find you and I will give us the love story that we deserve.  _

_ That you deserve. You deserve so much Joe and I cannot ever bear to see you sad so please promise me that you will find joy in this world. Promise me- _

~

The words blurred together then, ink running and he realizes that his tears were wiping away the last words his Nicky had ever written. He cries out, wiping his face furiously and stepping back. 

That was all he could read for that night, all that his bruised and battered heart could handle. 

~

_ Dear Joe, _

_ I ask that you not remember me for the good things.  _

_ That isn’t to say that I was not good, because I have moved well past that particular flavor of self-loathing. No, I know I have done good in this life. But I do not want to be a martyr, or a miracle or a statued shell of what I was. I want you to remember me for my flaws, I want you to remember me for my pettiness and my coldness and my anger. Remember me for my arguments and the way I liked a fight a bit too much. I would hope that you remember me by the love you had for me, though I don’t know if you even do love me anymore. _

_ God knows that I took enough from you, hurt you so many times and I guess that is because I am selfish and maybe that is another thing you should remember me for.  _

_ Joe I just want to be remembered as a man. As a person, in all our divine imperfection. I want to be remembered as the man who loved you with everything that I was and everything that I could be.  _

_ I think God took me from you early because he knew that I could not bear the thought of losing you first.  _

_ There is no way I would have allowed fate to tear you from my hand and I would have foot tooth and nail to bring you back. So God or angels or the universe had to take me away before I got the chance.  _

_ So, Joe, I cannot be there anymore, but I want you to remember me because you are the best parts of me. _

_ You always have been and as long as you walk this earth so will I.  _

_ I hope you take solace in that, if you do ever read these letters. If you do read this last letter.  _

_ Joe, I love you and I will miss you.  _

_ Sono qui. _

_ -Nicolo _

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_ Dear Nicky, _

_ Over the past year, I have searched for you in many places. In the breaks between clouds, in the reflection of the ocean, in the faces of every dark-haired man who passes me. Sometimes, I find you in my dreams and my fantasies, sometimes in the bodies of other men as selfish as that may make me. But it is only ever a fleeting glimpse, the aftertaste of a sweet drink gone before a full flavor is developed.  _

_ I have even gone to your church, possessed by the thought that, cold and buried as you were, I might find some trace of you amongst the candles. I found only dust and hymns and spilled communion wine.  _

_ I got my tenure. _

_ I know you would be proud. I know you will want to know that Nile and Booker were wed in the fall in a beautiful ceremony. Yes, Booker wept, as did I.  _

_ They’re expecting a baby boy now. They’re going to name it Nicholas.  _

_ Nicky, I love you but how I hate you. You broke my heart a million times a million different ways but I have never known an exhilaration than when I was with you. You were my soulmate, my other half, my candle in the dark, and my warmth on a winter night. You were my everything darling, and now you are worms and rot.  _

_ I wish I could end this letter telling you that I am happy. That I am healed and whole and have moved on.  _

_ But that would be a lie. One does not heal from losing the love of their life, no matter how flawed the relationship. Nicky I am never going to be the same. Life is duller and less vivid without you. It is colder and lonelier and sadder and there is not a damn thing I can do to change and I am so  _ **_angry_ ** _ with you my darling. Did you think me too weak? Too selfish or fearful to handle you in your sickness, that I would run from your deathbed? _

_ I do not know. I will never know.  _

_ I suppose I have to learn to live with the what-ifs.  _

_ Love, _

_ Joe _

**Author's Note:**

> My grandmother passed away due to complications from cancer back in may. We were meant to be there but because of covid could not be and because of covid we could not properly mourn. It has been a very difficult thing to process and part of writing this was most definitely a healing process. A lot of the stories and situations are taken from my own life so it's a very personal piece. I hope you all enjoyed


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